Gov't Mule
(Evil Teen)
"Sprawling." "Brawny." "Jamming." Terms all used by various observers at various times to describe NYC's Gov't Mule; sometimes as an epithet, depending on the tint of glasses being peered through. One man's rock is another man's roll, though, so here's the way the Mule - guitarist Warren Haynes, drummer Matt Abts, keyboardist Danny Louis and new bassist Jorgen Carlsson - rolls:
Hard.
Funky. (Free your ASS, and in this instance, your MIND will follow.)
Low-down, and
Dirty.
Seriously. (Billy Gibbons don't sit in with no pansies.)
Elegant. (Say what?)
For their first studio album in three years (there are countless live releases, EPs, DVDs and remix projects, so for the sake of argument we'll call 2006's High and Mighty the band's last record; go to Mule.net for a complete discography), Gov't Mule journeyed down to Texas to Willie Nelson's Pedernales enclave with producer Gordie Johnson, who also helmed High and Mighty. No doubt everyone was aiming to work a little Rio de los Brazos de Dios mojo into the grooves of By a Thread.
That they did, en route to creating their strongest album to date, even pausing to genuflect by way of opening track "Broke Down On The Brazos," a kinetic, brawny (there's that word) thumper featuring the aforementioned Mr. ZZ Top on guitar. As the Abts-Carlsson-Louis backline lay down an archetypal Lone Star groove, Haynes and Gibbons play dueling stereo channels, swapping blooze licks, cutting-contest style, like gunslingers finally coming face to face. Hold on pardnuhs, there's plenty room for both of yuh in this here town. Sings Haynes,
"Everywhere I go trouble's all I find
No matter what I do I feel like I'm losing my mind
Broke down on the Brazos
About to lose my mind."
Ain't it always so. Well, if you're gonna lose it, might as well use it, too. While Haynes is perennially ranked high in national and international "best guitarist" polls, his estimable fretboard skills sometimes overshadow his many other gifts. As a songwriter, he's steeped in the ‘70s hard rock, power blues and psychedelia he grew up on and he "gets" the lyrical and musical vernacular (as epitomized by the "Brazos" song), but his obvious hunger to know and experience literally every genre and era of music continues to feed his vision. This is a guy who can perform Free and Humble Pie covers one night, switch gears and do John Coltrane and Mongo Santamaria the next, and then wind up doing Prince and the Beatles the next. He's also smart enough to have surrounded himself with three of the most agile players in the biz: longtime drummer Abts, who puts the "Y" into the "brawny" and consistently demonstrates a jazzbo's finesse; keyboardist Louis, a gifted arranger and consummate collaborator, wary of excess but able to add nuance to virtually any path the Mule (and its frequent onstage guests) heads down; and bassist Carlsson, Swedish ex-pat, L.A. session player since the early ‘90s, erstwhile member of the Low Millions, charged with maintaining the band's storied bass legacy, and bringing an aggressive yet virtuoso side to the band. The bond these players have forged is evident on By a Thread.
Parts of the album scan as a musical history lesson, from the aforementioned ZZ-styled TX rocker to the "No Quarter"-like Led Zep overtones of the jazzily psychedelic "Monday Mourning Meltdown" (check Louis' organ and electric piano; they're pure John Paul Jones) to the part-waltz/part-stomp 9-minute blues jam of "Inside Outside Woman Blues #3" which references the Blind Joe Reynolds chestnut "Outside Woman Blues" previously made famous by Cream. And if you don't pick up on the Hendrix stylings coursing through "Any Open Window," Haynes' brief "Voodoo Chile" fretboard flourish and "S'cuse me!" spoken aside just may tip ya; that the tune's dedicated to late drummers Mitch Mitchell and Buddy Miles should not elude your notice, either. But as is typically the case with Gov't Mule, overt homage isn't the intention, for within songs myriad tangents crop up, and the finished project is always like a jigsaw puzzle: peer close, replay sections, and you'll detect individual pieces, discern how the sections slot together; but pull back and take things in, and you'll get the big picture with all its gradations in hue and texture.
By a Thread includes, incidentally, a pair of tunes originally cut during the High and Mighty sessions with prior bassist Andy Hess, the smoky-jazzy "Scenes From a Troubled Mind" and the spooky ballad "World Wake Up." Although the latter was written while Bush was still in office and is a lyric meditation on the events of that time ("Polarized, hypnotized... logic fails, greed prevails - world, wake up") it is clearly relevant to the here and now. Haynes is rarely tagged as a political songsmith per se - Gov't Mule songs are littered with the bones of plenty of bad women, hard-luck individuals and souls on the verge - but he is a guy who's lived through at least two corrupt government administrations in Amerika and he's never shied away from topical commentary when the mood strikes, even as he holds out hope that the bad times that bedevil us won't last.
Two other songs bear scrutiny as well. "Forever More" originally appeared on the 2004 Haynes solo album Live From Bonnaroo. It starts off, true to its origins, as a delicate acoustic folk number, gradually rising in volume and tempo as the other players chime in, ultimately spiraling into anthemic territory, replete with an elegiac wah-wah solo from Haynes. Thematic kin to that cut is "Railroad Boy," a traditional folk song with distinctive Celtic overtones (Haynes is a native of Asheville, NC, located in the Celtic-rich western North Carolina mountains); here, following an intro from Haynes playing a droning, Richard Thompson-esque modal riff, the band enters and kicks into the kind of electric folkrock arrangement that Thompson might've conjured years earlier with Fairport Convention. It's a riveting, visceral, haunting tune, without question one of Gov't Mule's most elegant moments ever committed to record - and a song that just may turn the heads of folks who think they've got Haynes & Co. preemptively pegged.
Still kickass after all these years, sure, but just the same... "elegant," "delicate," "elegiac," haunting": perhaps it's time to expand our vocabulary a bit. Get behind the Mule, folks, before it gets past YOU.
Standout Tracks: "Railroad Boy," "Inside Outside Woman Blues #3," "Broke Down on the Brazos" FRED MILLS
